Utterly exhausted you crawl into bed, knowing full well that you will not be able to read for more than a page before your eyes give out and you are asleep.

Sure enough, three quarters of a page later it is lights out and you snuggle down into the fluffy warmth of the duvet and begin to drift. The pale light of the streetlamps casts a screen on the wall and bats are silhouetted within it as they flit about their nightly business. They will be hibernating soon, it is getting cold. You wish the mosquito that bit your finger was hibernating. Permanently perhaps.

You toss and turn shifting position with almost clockwork regularity. Bits of you can’t get comfortable, bits of you supremely comfy and not wanting to move. The two can’t agree and you are caught in the middle. Nevertheless you are now moving more than you have all evening and more conscious of being wakeful than is decent at this time of night. Especially with the necessity for an early start.

You don’t want to look at the clock. Either it will tell you that you have already missed twenty percent of your possible sleep or that you have only been there ten minutes, even though it feels like hours. Either would be depressing.

Whatever time it is, the whole scenario has a depressing familiarity about it. Your mind in now way too busy to sleep and the plumbing is clicking and banging as pipes cool and contract.
You give in and throw off the covers, scrabbling for the dressing gown in the dark and hoping no spiders have taken up residence in the slippers.

As soon as you stand up you can feel the fatigue. Unsteady you head for the stairs and the kitchen. Hot milk, a good old standby. Who knows, it might help.

The dog eyes you with disgust through half closed eyes as the light goes on. One o’clock. So much for a decent night’s sleep, you have to be up in four hours.

The daft thing is that you feel mentally wide awake while your body feels as if it has run a marathon wearing lead weights. And now the dog wants to go out.

Half an hour and you’ll try again.

Insomnia sucks.

It’ll be caffeine for breakfast.

Preferably intravenously.